Day 37: Forster to Arrawarra

Kilometres: 348km

Diesel: $100.76

Food: 0

Ice: 0

Awake early as we always are when sleeping in the streets, we headed straight back to our favourite spot at One Mile Beach. After a walk and a surf we were just about ready to start the day. Just about. But first…pancakes. We had avoided pancakes all of this trip because our frying pan had a habit of sticking to everything that went anywhere near it. Today though, we had access to BBQs! We cooked up a stack of pancakes and piled them high with strawberries, blackberries, yoghurt and honey. What a treat! Then though, it was time for another big drive.

After a couple of hours of driving, we chose to get off the highway for a while. I remembered people from up home going to South West Rocks camping quite a bit. I figured if they were willing to drive all the way down here for a camping trip, it must be pretty lovely.

We did a quick tour of the town then headed out to Little Bay, which looked pretty lovely on Google Maps. And it was. We parked up under the tree and headed straight for the water. Veruca has no air-conditioning it was exceptionally sticky today. The large sign warning swimmers of a strong and dangerous undercurrent would not deter us. Little Bay was indeed a little bay. Large rocks on either side left a narrow channel for the waves to break between and what resulted was waves crashing into rock walls, bouncing off and hitting the other side. It was a bit of a washing machine, especially when all of the water that had rushed in, then needed to rush back out to sea. We got wet though, along with a few locals. Chatting to one friendly old guy, we found out a lot about this little spot. Apparently, a huge portion of the rocks we could see were, not long ago, completely covered in sand. And about three years ago, when the cyclone came through, it emptied Little Bay of sand completely, leaving only stones and a 30 foot drop to the water below. Incredible. We made some lunch and found that the local kangaroos were very interested in what we were eating. We had seen countless kangaroos in our travels but here, there were signs everywhere warning that they could be very aggressive. So, when they started making their way over to us, I couldn’t help but wonder if they would prove to be the boxing kangaroo variety. A couple of curious characters even wanted to get into the van! Chris had to brave the marsupials to rescue a terrified Veruca.

After seeing signs for the ruins of an old gaol on the way into town, we were happy to find a walking track that would take us there from our little picnic area. We strapped on our hats and set off. The path took us up and over the headland where the strong wind meant only the toughest low-lying shrubs grew. Turns out the gaol had been built to house prisoners that were brought into the area to build a break wall. Very specific. It was later used to house Germans who were taken during the war for fear of them being informants. We also passed a German Monument on the way which was built in 1918 and blown up by some unhappy soul in 1919. This area had a fair bit f history!

After checking out the sights we returned to spend some more time at Little Bay. We took a track past the remnants of the Powder Magazines that were used to house explosives a long time ago. Back with Veruca we sat and watched as an increasing number of grazing kangaroos wanted to hang out with us.

By the time we left that evening I counted around 30 kangaroos. We were surrounded and it was all very cute.

We then made our way to a headland near the South West Rocks Surf Club. We went for a wander around town and grabbed some pizza before laying out the picnic rug. Surrounded by ocean and a setting sun, this was a pretty grand place to eat dinner.

We thought about staying the night in South West Rocks but figured we might as well get a little further up the coast. We wanted to be in Queensland by Tuesday and would chip away at the drive slowly. We located a perfect rest stop. The only problem was that the new road we were on wasn’t on our map. So, we managed to completely miss the town we planned to stay in. We pulled into a service station so I could make tea and Chris could access some cookies before we kept on a bit further up the highway. Stopping briefly only to get a photo with the Big Banana, we parked up at Arrawarra Rest Area. It was brand new, gigantic and we were among many to be taking advantage of such a great stop.